The Car (1977)

Directed
by Elliot Silverstein

The Car is a 70s
horror movie, starring James Brolin and Kathleen Lloyd. Obviously, I
won't be surprising anyone when I say that it is about a car; and like
the car in John
Carpenter's Christine,
this vehicle seems to have a life of its own. I suppose it would be an
easy thing to compare the two movies and say they came from the same
mould, but that's not the case at all—not in my opinion anyway. I first
saw both movies back in the eighties. I liked them both then and I
still
do now. The car in Christine
is a shiny, eye-catching mechanical monster that stalks its victims to
the sound of the funky, old, rock and roll music playing on its radio.
The car in this movie has no radio though; the only sounds come from
its engine, the squealing of its tyres and the blasting of its terrible
horn. The car's horn emits such an abrasive noise that it can send
shudders down your backbone and make you want to plug your ears. You
hear quite a lot of the horn throughout the movie as well, because the
car seems to use it as a means of intimidating its victims and
announcing its evil intentions.

At the beginning of the
movie a young couple are bicycling along a high mountain road.
It is a sunny day and there are some nice views for them to admire.
Somewhere behind them though, in the distance, a cloud of dust is
sweeping along the desert roads. The camera shows the couple on their
bikes, it shows the dust, then the couple again and eventually the car
that is causing all the dust. It is rather an ugly-looking, black
monstrosity and every now and again the viewer is treated to a view
through the windshield of the car. The car has tinted windows. From the
outside they look black, but from inside it is like looking through
amber. As you might expect, the car soon catches up with the young
couple and, after a few caustic blasts of its horn, it ends their days
of bicycles and mountain roads forever, leaving just a shoe lying in
the road next to a badly buckled, but still spinning, wheel.

Brolin plays policeman, Wade Parent, who lives with his two young
daughters and just happens to be knocking off one of their
teachers: a young lady called Lauren. Lauren is a fun girl
and she and Wade make a nice couple who seem to have the children's
blessings if they ever decide to get it together on a more permanent
basis. Unfortunately for all concerned though, trouble is coming to
town. The car's next victim is a young tuba player who is hoping for a
lift. Hitchhiking has never been so dangerous and the car reverses over
his dead body a few times just to make sure the tread marks are good
and deep. Fortunately for the weak of stomach, the viewer is not shown
the carnage up close and in glorious Technicolor. This is a movie from
the seventies, remember, and they did things a little differently back
then. With modern movies the viewer might need to keep a barf-bag handy
but an imagination is not necessary. The Car leaves it
all to the viewer's imagination. We know the guy's mincemeat. We don't
need to see it. Even the bird in the tree has been shocked
into silence.

The car has so little respect for law and order that even the poor, old
sheriff gets to take as few tyre tracks to his coffin with him. One
deputy starts hitting the bottle a few more deputies start getting hit
by the car and nobody in the town is safe.

To add a few extra worries to Wade's collection, an old Indian
woman—who witnessed the sheriff's murder—says that the car had no
driver!

The
Car isn't going to be to everyone's taste I am sure, but
it has stood the test of time pretty well and even though the vehicles
in it give away the movie's age it still does not come across as
feeling dated.

A big, black car with a bad attitude and no driver, what more could any
horror fan want?